• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.67-75
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• 2010

The fuel moisture changes accompanying with the elapsed days after a rainfall is very important to predict the risk of forest fire and make a good use of forest fire guard. So, to investigate the conditions for the risk of forest fire, it was studied the risk of forest fire for fallen leaves level, rotten level, and soil level after more-than-5 mm-rainfall according to the different forest density of pine forests which were located in Yeong-dong region in the Spring of 2007. The result of the study showed that the around 17% of fuel moisture which was the risky level for forest fire was reached after three days of a rainfall in the coarse dense forest region and after five days in the medium or highly dense forest region. However, for the rotten level represents more than 30% of fuel moisture even after six days after the rainfall, and the lower and upper level of the soil represented a slight or almost no changes. Based on the result, the prediction model ($R^2$=0.56~0.87) for the change of fuel moisture was developed, and it was examined by applying to actual meteorological measurements in the same period of 2008. It showed a meaningful result of 1% level of distinction.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.28-41
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• 2009

Because fire has significant impacts on fauna and flora in forest ecosystems, as well as socioeconomic influences to local community, it has been an important field of study for decades. One of the most common ways to reduce fire risk is to enhance fire-resilience of forest through fuel treatments including thinning and prescribed burning. Since fuel treatment can't be practiced over all forested areas, appropriate and effective strategies are needed. The present study aims to look at the relationship between spatial characteristics of forest structure measured with landscape pattern metrics and burn severity to provide guidelines for effective fuel treatments. Samchuck fire was selected for the study, and 232 grids covering the study areas were generated, and the grid size was 1km. The burn severity is measured with dNBR derived from satellite imagery, and spatial characteristics of forest structure were measured using FRAGSTATS for both landscape and class levels for each 1km grid. The results of this study strongly indicated that heterogeneity in composition and configuration of forests may significantly reduce burn severity. By enhancing heterogeneity of forests, fuel treatments for fire-resilience forest could be more effective.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.219-228
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• 2022

This study examined the relationship between the number of forest fires and days with no rainfall based on the national forest fire statistics data of the Korea Forest Service and meteorological data from the Open MET Data Portal of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA; data.kma.go.kr) for the last 30 years (1991-2021). As for the trend in precipitation amount and non-rainfall days, the rainfall and the days with rainfall decreased in 2010 compared to those in 1990s. In terms of the number of forest fires that occurred in February-May accounted for 75% of the total number of forest fires, followed by 29% in April and 25% in March. In 2000s, the total number of forest fires was 5,226, indicating the highest forest fire activity. To analyze the relationship between regional distribution of non-rainfall periods (days) and number of forest fires, the non-rainfall period was categorized into five groups (0 days, 1-10 days, 11-20 days, 21-30 days, and 31 days or longer). During the spring fire danger season, the number of forest fires was the largest when the non-rainfall period was 11-20 days; during the autumn fire precaution period, the number of forest fires was the largest when the non-rainfall period was 1-10 days, 11-20 days, and 21-30 days, showing differences in the duration of forest fire occurrence by region. The 30-year trend indicated that large forest fires occurred only between February and May, and in terms of the relationship with the non-rainfall period groups, large fires occurred when the non-rainfall period was 1-10 days. This signifies that in spring season, the dry period continued throughout the country, indicating that even a short duration of consecutive non-rainfall days poses a high risk of large forest fires.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.52-58
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• 2007

The effect of stand-growing-stock characteristics of thinning area and non-thinning area on forest fire was studied in this work. 14 spots were selected from 3 counties such as Yangyang, Injae, and Gapyeong and on-the-spot investigations were performed to evaluate the effect of forest fire. The stand-growing-stock characteristics on the spots were analyzed through the height of tree, breast height diameter, clear length, mortality of branch, forest tree standing crop density, degree of closure, and shrub and grass cover degree. The relation between forest fire and the risk of spread of forest fire were analyzed from the analysis of the stand-growing-stock characteristics. It is considered from this work that the possibility of forest fire is decreased on the thinning area compared to the non-thinning area because of higher clearlength, lower number of tree, lower mortality of branch and higher shrub and grass cover degree.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.80 no.3
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• pp.257-264
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• 1991

Korea has accomplished the afforestation of its forest land in the early 1980's. To meet the increasing demand for forest products and forest recreation, a development of scientific forest management system is needed as a whole. For this purpose the development of efficient forestfire management system is essential. In this context, the purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical foundation of forestfire danger rating system. In this study, it is hypothesized that the degree of forestfire risk is affected by Weather Factor and Man-Caused Risk Factor. (1) To accommodate the Weather Factor, a statistical model was estimated in which weather variables such as humidity, temperature, precipitation, wind velocity, duration of sunshine were included as independent variables and the probability of forestfire occurrence as dependent variable. (2) To account man-caused risk, historical data of forestfire occurrence was investigated. The contribution of man's activities make to risk was evaluated from three inputs. The first, potential risk class is a semipermanent number which ranks the man-caused fire potential of the individual protection unit relative to that of the other protection units. The second, the risk sources ratio, is that portion of the potential man-caused fire problem which can be charged to a specific cause. The third, daily activity level is that the fire control officer's estimate of how active each of these sources is, For each risk sources, evaluate its daily activity level ; the resulting number is the partial risk factor. Sum up the partial risk factors, one for each source, to get the unnormalized Man-Caused Risk. To make up the Man-Caused Risk, the partial risk factor and the unit's potential risk class were considered together. (3) At last, Fire occurrence index was formed fire danger rating estimation by the Weather Factors and the Man-Caused Risk Index were integrated to form the final Fire Occurrence Index.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.29-37
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• 2011

Forest fire in Korea has been controlled by local government, so that it is required to understand the characteristics of regional forest fire occurrences for the effective management. In this study, to analyze the patterns of regional forest fire occurrences, we divided South Korea into nine zones based on administrative boundaries and performed spatial statistical analysis using the location data of forest fire occurrences for 1991-2008. The spatial distributions of forest fire were analyzed by the variogram, and the risk of forest fire was predicted by kriging analysis. As a result, forest fires in metropolitan areas showed strong spatial correlations, while it was hard to find spatial correlations of forest fires in local areas without big city as Gangwon-do, Chungcheongbuk-do and Jeju island.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.694-709
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• 2021

Purpose: In this study, earthquake-induced landslide risk assessment was conducted to provide basic data for efficient and preemptive damage prevention by selecting the erosion control work before the earthquake and the prediction and restoration priorities of the damaged area after the earthquake. Method: The study analyzed the previous studies abroad to examine the evaluation methodology and to derive the evaluation factors, and examine the utilization of the landslide hazard map currently used in Korea. In addition, the earthquake-induced landslide hazard map was also established on a pilot basis based on the fault zone and epicenter of Pohang using seismic attenuation. Result: The earthquake-induced landslide risk assessment study showed that China ranked 44%, Italy 16%, the U.S. 15%, Japan 10%, and Taiwan 8%. As for the evaluation method, the statistical model was the most common at 59%, and the physical model was found at 23%. The factors frequently used in the statistical model were altitude, distance from the fault, gradient, slope aspect, country rock, and topographic curvature. Since Korea's landslide hazard map reflects topography, geology, and forest floor conditions, it has been shown that it is reasonable to evaluate the risk of earthquake-induced landslides using it. As a result of evaluating the risk of landslides based on the fault zone and epicenter in the Pohang area, the risk grade was changed to reflect the impact of the earthquake. Conclusion: It is effective to use the landslide hazard map to evaluate the risk of earthquake-induced landslides at the regional scale. The risk map based on the fault zone is effective when used in the selection of a target site for preventive erosion control work to prevent damage from earthquake-induced landslides. In addition, the risk map based on the epicenter can be used for efficient follow-up management in order to prioritize damage prevention measures, such as to investigate the current status of landslide damage after an earthquake, or to restore the damaged area.

• Proceedings of the Korean Association of Geographic Inforamtion Studies Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.251-253
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• 2008

Erosion and landslide cause serious damage to forest areas. As a consequence, partial or complete destruction of vegetation occurs, which leads to many cascading problems. In this study, an attempt has been made to identify the forest areas, which are under different risk categories of erosion and landslide, in part of Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu. Relevantthematic maps were generated from satellite data, topographical maps, primary and secondary data and weights to each map were assigned appropriately. Weighted overlay analysis was carried out to identify the erosionprone forest areas. The result of erosion and landslide prone model reveals that 4712 ha(17%) of forest area is under high risk category and 15879 ha(58.65%) isunder medium risk category. The results of spatial modeling would be very much useful to the forest officials and conservationist to plan for effective conservation.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2008

The effect of thinned trees which are produced from forest thinning on forest fire was studied in this work. To investigate the effect of thinning slash, Yang-yang, In-je, and Ga-pyeong-gun were selected as thinning-areas and non-thinning areas. The research was carried out with the variations of tree's types, area's characteristics, thinning strength, thinning types, and pile types of thinned tree. The survey areas of 14 areas were selected at Yangyang-gun(5 areas), Gapyeong-gun(4 areas), and Inje-gun(5 areas), and on-the-spot investigations were carried out at the thinning areas of 9 and the non-thinning areas of 5, respectively. Non-thinning areas of 5, which are adjacent to thinning areas, were selected for the comparison with thinning areas and for the analysis of risk of forest fire. It is considered that forest fire have no chance to diffuse to a tree trunk because the height of thinned trees was lower than 1 m. However, it is considered that forest fire may affect directly to a tree trunk if it spread to piled thinned tree because there was no space between thinned trees and trees. Furthermore, it was found that re-ignition had a chance to occur due to lots of piled thinning trees.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.333-336
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• 2008

This study is the result between the variation of fuel moisture and the risk of forest fire through measuring the change of moisture containing ratio on-site and its average analysis for each diameter of surface dead fuels in the forest. The measurement was performed on six days from the day after a rainfall. The fuel moisture on-site was measured on the day when the accumulated rainfall was above 5.0mm, and the measurements was 2 times in spring. From the pine forest which were distributed around Samcheok and Donghae in Kangwondo, three regions were selected by loose, medium, and dense forest density, and the fuel moisture was measured on the ranges which are less than 0.6cm, 0.6-3.0cm, 3.0-6.0cm, and more than 6.0cm in the forest for six days from the day after a rainfall. The study showed that the moisture containing ratio converged on 3 - 4 days for surface deads fuels which diameter are less than 3.0cm and the convergence was made more than six days for ones which diameters are more than 3.0cm except the surface dead fuel of 3.0-6.0cm diameter of loose forest density.